Some entirely unrelated items of note:

- Stephen Metcalfe on rock snobbery. The article in turn inspired Belle Waring’s Crooked Timber post complaining about how the rock snob is always imagined as male, which of course turns into an orgy of rock-snobbery in the comments. I will admit in chagrin that my first thought on reading Metcalfe’s description of the true Rock Snob was not “too true” or “how apt,” but rather “The Mountain Goats covered ‘Dr. Wu’?”

- Yahoo! Maps new beta version: to quote the ever-useful Joe Keenan, it’s not an impersonation, it’s an homage.

- And this awful news from BoingBoing: Woman crashes into power station, killed by bees - which for me provoked far less awful memories of another space far less fatally taken over by bees at a certain editrix’s summer cottage. When we were awaiting the hordes summer before last, she put up a sign on the bee room that said “Keep Out!”

“Editrix,” I said, “if there was ever a sign guaranteed to get the people in this crowd to peek in, that would be it.”

“Well, what do you suggest?” she asked.

“How about ‘covered in bees’?” I said, doing my best Eddie Izzard. “Covered in beeees!”

Sadly, I spent the whole weekend giggling to myself about that, and I still do. But bees, clearly, no laughing matter. Editrix, you’re on notice.